speak. The elder strode to the
door and looked out into the sun of early morning, and the cool shadows
of the cottonwood trees at the riverside which reached almost to his
walls.

"To a train! God A'mighty--to a train!" Morgan heard him say.

"How far is it from Ascalon to the river?" Morgan asked.

"Over two miles! And your hands tied--God A'mighty!"

"You take it easy, they'll not leave Ascalon till Sol Drumm, their boss,
comes back from Kansas City," the young man said. "We're layin' for him
ourselves, we've got a bill against him."

"And we've got about as much show to collect it as we have to dip a
hatful of stars out of the river," Stilwell said, turning gloomily from
the door.

"We'll see about that!" the younger one returned, in high and defiant
stubbornness.

"We've already lost upwards of five hundred head of stock from that
feller's trespass on our range," Stilwell explained. "That gang drove in
here three weeks ago to rest and feed up for market, payin' no attention
to anybody's range or anybody's warning to keep off. They had the men
with them to go where they pleased. Them Texas cattle come up here
loaded with fever ticks, and the bite of them little bugs means death to
a northern herd. They sowed ticks all over my range. I'm still a losin'
cattle, and Lord knows where it will stop."

"You've been working to get a quarantine law passed, I remember," Morgan
said, feeling this outrage as if the cattle were his own.

"Yes, but Congress is asleep, and them fellers down in Texas never shut
their eyes. I warned Drumm to keep off my range, asked him first like a
gentleman, but he drove in one night between my pickets and mixed his
poison cattle with mine out of pure cussidness. He claimed they got
away, and him with fifteen or twenty men to ride herd! It's cost me ten
thousand dollars, at the lowest figure, already, and more goin'. It
looks like it would clean me out."

"You ought to have some recourse against him in law," Morgan said.

"Yes, I thought so, too. I went to the county attorney and wanted to
bring an attachment on Drumm's herd, but he told me there wasn't any law
he could act under, it was anybody's range as much as mine, Texas fever
or no Texas fever. I could sue him, he said, but it was a slim chance.
Well, I'm goin' to see another lawyer--I'll take it up with Judge
Thayer, and see what he can do."

"Drumm'll pay it, down to the last dime!" the young man declared.

"We can't hold h